Gregg Hurwitz is a critically acclaimed American crime novelist and comic book writer. He is a New York Times best selling author whose books have been shortlisted twice for the novel of the year by the International Thriller Writers, honored as Book Sense Picks and nominated for the Galaxy National Book award. His books have also been picked as feature selections for all four major literary book clubs and have been translated into 26 languages. His novel “I See You” was nominated for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for the best thriller of the year by the British Crime Writers’ Association.Gregg Hurwitz grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and aspired to be an author since he was a little boy. Even as a child he would often would write stories and illustrate it with crayons. He has a BA from Harvard University and a masters degree in Shakespearean tragedy from Trinity college, Oxford. It was during his time in these two prestigious universities that he wrote his first novel, The Tower. He excelled at sports playing college soccer at Oxford and was the scholar athlete of the year at Harvard. He has since guest lectured at UCLA and his alma mater Harvard. He has also taught fiction writing at USC and has published several academic articles on William Shakespeare.Gregg Hurwitz grew up on a diet of Alfred Hitchcock movies and initially wrote fast paced super cop thrillers but marriage and starting a family brought about significant changes in his writing style. He became more interested in the trials and tribulations of the common man and developed a new found appreciation for the classic suspense setups where an ordinary citizen is caught at the worst phase of his life. Thus his novels began to focus more on the emotion filled stories of common people facing uncommon situations.

While most of his works are standalone novels he has written a four novel series based on deputy United States Marshal Tim Rackley. The first book,”The Kill Clause” starts off with the brutal murder of his young daughter. Tim Rackley finds his honor and ideals tested as he watches helplessly while his daughter’s killer walks free on a legal technicality. Overcome by his need for vengeance Rackley joins “The Commission”, a group consisting of people, who like Rackley had lost loved ones to violent crime. The group dedicates itself to correcting the failings of an imperfect judicial system and covertly cleaning up society of criminals let off by the law. But the vigilante life comes at a heavy price as he soon finds his life breaking down all around him. He must now fight to save everything he holds dear.The second book in the series is titled “The Program” and features a redeemed Rackley called back to the United States Marshals Service. He is then assigned with the task of retrieving Leah Henning, the daughter of an influential Hollywood producer. She has been kidnapped by a mind control cult and Rackley goes undercover to infiltrate the organization. He encounters a varied set of characters including the charismatic leader of the cult, a shady cult reject and a vulnerable, young Leah herself. As he delves deeper into the case he discovers a sinister operation called The Program and in the process witnesses a horrifying brand of mind warping manipulation used to commit a series of crimes. He decides that he must destroy the cult before it ensnares more innocent people. This time however he works within the framework of the law.The remaining two novels “Troubleshooter” and “Last Shot” follow Tim Rackley as he gets involved with a nefarious biker gang in one and tries to solve the mystery of an impossible prison break in the other.

Another absorbing novel written by Gregg Hurwitz is “Trust No One, a political potboiler that stays true to its name by casting a cloud of suspicion over almost every major character. The protagonist, Nick Horrigan is a man plagued by doubts and questions living a watchful life. Assailed by painful memories of a troubled past, he keeps his head low and leads a quiet sedentary life. His peace is suddenly disrupted when some Secret Service agents inform him that a terrorist threatening to blow up a nearby nuclear plant has singled him out as the only person he would speak to. The Secret Service agents seem to be as clueless as Nick himself regarding this strange demand. His meeting with the terrorist reveals a connection between the death of his step father 17 years ago and his current situation. The story soon blows up and Nick finds himself embroiled in the Presidential campaign of two powerful candidates, one of whom is responsible for all his troubles over of a span 17 years. Determined to stop running away Nick takes a stand to see matters through to the end.

Gregg Hurwitz firmly believes in the old adage of writing the book you would want to read yourself instead of pandering to the market. As an ardent Shakespeare lover, Gregg Hurwitz too prefers to work with well defined structure and convention while writing. His writing process begins when a character and a plot come together and his novels are heavily character-centric and feature the protagonist being thrown into one life threatening situation after another. His novels enjoy a wide and varied fan base spanning all age groups and are described as fast paced thrillers that makes the reader always want to turn one more page. He also gets very absorbed in the books he writes preferring to do all the research himself. This has led to him undertaking risky activities such as sneaking into demolition ranges with Navy SEALs, swimming with sharks and actually infiltrating mind control cults, all as part of research for his novels.He has also worked extensively in comics and is a New York Times best selling comic book writer having worked with both DC and Marvel on notable projects such as The Dark Knight, Wolverine, Punisher and Penguin. He has dabbled in television too having written screenplays, sold spec scripts to studios and produced shows for various networks. Despite his large body of work he considers writing novels as his one true love.

With the latest book in the Gray Man series by Mark Greaney coming out soon, we wanted to make the very first book in the series our book of the month.

Greaney is an incredible author and if you love the "lone badass" type of books then you will LOVE the Court "Gray Man" Gentry series. Read more about it.

Featured Series

It might seem like overkill, but we're giving The Gray Man series our featured series of the month.

Honestly this is such a great series and we feel not enough people read it so we want to push it. Read more about The Gray Man series and seriously if you haven't read it - start! Amazing thrillers.

Featured Author

Mark Greaney is an incredibly talented author. Not only does he write the Gray Man series however he also writes various Jack Ryan novels. Many feel he is the best writer of them and he truly is a great author. We're happy to award our author of the month to Mark Greaney.

Did You Know…

The Kellermans (Faye and her husband, novelist Jonathan) are the only married couple ever to appear on the New York Times bestseller list simultaneously (for two different books). Their oldest child, Jesse Kellerman, is a bestselling novelist and award-winning playwright. Their youngest, Aliza Kellerman, co-wrote Prism (2009), a young adult novel, with her mother.